Sunday, October 18, 2015

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore has announced the first in a series of Best of Rainbow and Deep Purple shows planned for 2016.

Blackmore will perform at the Monsters Of Rock festival in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Germany on June 18.

Tickets for the rare rock event by the founding member of Deep Purple will go on sale November 6.

“I am doing four dates in June, which will be all rock," Blackmore tells Noisey. "I have the band basically together and it will be Rainbow and Deep Purple. It’s just having fun but it’s only four dates in Europe. I don’t want to do anymore because I take what I’m doing now much more seriously.”

Since 1997, Blackmore has been focusing his energies on Blackmore’s Night, a medieval folk band he formed with then-girlfriend and now-wife Candice Night.

The guitarist left Deep Purple in 1975 to form Rainbow, who went on to issue 8 albums. Blackmore returned for a reunion of the Mk II lineup of Deep Purple in 1984 and, after three albums and some lineup changes, he exited the group for good in 1993.